Volkov Homepage

The Children's Collection 

Mother
First step
Father
First Opus
Grandfather Came!
Waltz of Marmoset with Elephant
In a street
In a museum
Guests
Cartoons
Melancholy
Kitten Poosh
Lullaby
Dream

A Critical Analysis about Sergey Volkov's  and Vyacheslav Gaivoronsky's Artistic Expression

      Sergey Volkov Last Self Portrait 1994

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   The world of eternally true things is small but universal. It does not matter how different or unique these principals are, their fundamental essence are incontestable for everyone. It is true that as any one who is within the gravitation field of the Earth feels the power of its pull, every one who ponders over the question “ where am I from?” accepts the justifiable answer “I am a product of my childhood.”  

This aphoristic affirmation is the first heart felt response of many a person who has looked through this unusual album at least once.  

   The experiences of our childhood never disappears, they only hide away in a secluded place of our “ego”, ceding to the experiences youth , maturity and old age. This childhood record of our formative experiences reminds us of ourselves at the most uncertain of times. As soon as one feels the taste of fish oil in the mouth or all of the sudden smell a well known fragrance of granny’s perfume miraculously preserved in a scent coming from an empty empty bottle. Just as miraculously childhood memories  will emerge from their hidden shelter stopping us from our headlong race through life, freezing and immersing us into a magic moment, which when found we desperately try to prolong them…Lucky people are those who are able to nurture and strengthen the thinnest threads connecting us with our childhood. These people are those who have the ability to strike the miracle bell to that sounds a fragile remembrance which rescues us from our mysterious stupor. The musician Vyacheslav Gaivoronsky and artist Sergey Volkov are the two such bell ringers.  

"First Step" By Sergey Volkov

  Musician and Artist magically open for us a window upon this forgotten but cherished world, otherwise only accessible only for initiated or those who have inner vision which is able to hear and see the innermost music in the heart. On the flatness of a sheet of paper Sergey creates a miraculous screen which becomes a border between reality and memory. We being mortal watch the movies of our childhood singly, not being able to commemorate them into images by sounds or paints, but these two musician and artist are able to share those images with us. In this case the artistic power is defined and measured by the power of resonance in our hearts, the power of universality, and recognizing oneself in another person's expression of their own experience.  

   Sergey and Vyacheslav have created a direct window to our own memories offering us a magic carpet ride through our own childhood memories.

    The intention to express the immense layer of psycho-emotional nature of an individual as fully as possible led to the necessity to use polyphony of a cycled type. They build up the cycle like a movie edited from different episodes but united by the same subject, through action of  the same character.

    The central character is a child, kid, baby…someone who is the expression of all of us. Who is it – a boy or a girl? Is this the author, as he sees himself in his childhood, or finely noticed world of his daughter? Or son?  The secret is that  the main character is the mystic personification  merging of both child seen with the author’s own “inner” child, extracted from the secrecy of subconscious and awakened by his own fatherhood. This merging is absolute, because the childhood never would have been revived except by his own children granted by destiny and fate. Would it have been possible: this deep and immense passage into one’s own heart, into those remote times and places, when “ trees were high”… had not had his own children to nurture??

  In the creative cooperation of Artist and Musician each played  his own essential role. The worlds of the visible image and audible sounds exist side by side, enriching and harmonizing with  each other but each media using its own characteristic language.

 

  It is important for an Artist to show not the course of events, but to immerse the mind into that fairylike world of charming discoverers. Each of us passed through our own childhood country, which we left long ago. In the compositions our artists express that special condition of discovering the world by renewing the undimmed memory in our child’s heart, allowing us to redicovery and remember the charm of those experiences. That magic moment and place where the whole universe can be found in one yard, when a kid meets a butterfly,  a star, flower or snowflake. This seems mysterious, mystical and full of special meaning. These moments are DIFFERENT, a space where the laws and logic which are common for us as adults, are not at work yet.

  This is the magic of childhood when the spontaneity of discovery and the apprehensions of a child’s soul which will later disappear  is the leit-motif of the series of Sergey Volkov.  He has designed this world carefully, calling to us as an unpredicted guest, trying not to frighten  but to reanimate an apparition and memory, which can disappear as a  result of the slightest rustle.

     Most clearly the meaning of this is seen in the images of “Dream” and “ Cartoons”. The character is existing in the associative space full of metaphorical objects of his childhood’s fantasy which are arising somewhere in the depth of his unconscious and drawing his mind into  vortex streams of associated memories. This method of showing the inside through the outside is exactly the core connecting the graphic sheets of the album. When there are not fantasies but the reality of the world of common things in the foreground, the principle of “inside through the outside” remains.  “Grandfather came!” – the scene seems to be seen in two dimensions at once from outside and from inside ( with the eyes of the kid on the swings.); one frozen moment shows  a  slightly deformed and foreshortened world full of the joyful feeling of a holiday, when all  life can be put on hold until the evening…

    The method of slight deformation of daily objects helps to inspire them with a breath of special life characteristic to a children’s imagination. In this way the grand piano becomes alive in “ First opus”. It takes on the characteristics like a kind of warm blooded animal such as a hippopotamus, creating the expression that the piano itself is a full-blooded co-author of the young pianist! As the  piano produces sounds and those sounds mix with the sun light and fill the space of the room with a cloud like a spiritual veil.

    If objects can be inspired what can be said about animals inhabiting the world of childhood? Kitten is the closest and most approachable for the contact with a little person. Its image gets into the “frame” of a sheet more often than any other: it is almost a tiger  in (“Kitten Poosh”), or mystic and magic gaurdian of the night in (“Lullaby”), a friend who understands everything (“Cartoons”) or a fairytale character “cat-scholar” (“Grandfather came!”). There are exotic animals from circus in childhood leading their own fantasy lives-             “ Waltz” represents an episode in the enchanting spectacle from the performances in the life of an elephant-artist.  

  The center of gravity of a child’s soul, the hub of his world and the personification of his life, at last, is the child’s mother. What warmth and peacefulness radiates from the image sheet called “Mother”! Softness in the silhouette of her figure, in the folds of her dress…comfort and calmness are felt in her whole appearance. In truth in childhood “ my mother is the most beautiful”… this is how a child could see his mother through their half closed eyelashes a moment before sinking into a sweet and careless sleep, which is possible only in childhood.

      Looking through the album again it comes to the mind that in general we are dealing with the REFLECTION of the appreciation of the child’s soul where the artist has  a pass owning to his person talent for memory and expression. Sergey suggests where to look for the key to the understanding of the  depicting: “Father” – a self-portrait of the artist- on the surface of the vase is a reflection of the window upon the world of childhood which he has opened for us.

     Sergey as an artist has a complete command of an intelligible and self-determined way of expressing deep emotional meaning through the visual.  Vyacheslav as  composer, ruling in the world of sounds, appeals to our finer spheres of comprehension. For those who are able penetrate into his musical resonance's will enjoy reflecting on the times of childhood, and to feel the finest of esthetic pleasures. Each score is like a complete and perfect jewel in the necklace of the musical cycle. The composer has chosen enriched colors on a broad palette and builds up rhythm of lines, using all available ways of organizing of sound fields creating unique musical images characteristic to the preset topic.  

   “Children’s Album” created, born, and nurtured by Gaivoronsky-Volkov  shows to us the talents and skillfulness of its creators by becoming the wonderful union of two eternal arts.

 

GALINA CARGANOVA, 

art-critic and writer, St. Petersburg, Russia

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